Capsule reviews for Jan. 14

Borrego

Examining drug culture along the Mexican border with minimal insight or suspense, this contrived thriller becomes lost in the desert, like its characters. Elly (Lucy Hale) is a botanist studying invasive plant species in far southern California. After witnessing a plane crash involving a drug mule (Leynar Gomez), she’s taken hostage and forced to fight for survival while hoping the local sheriff and his teenage daughter find them before the vengeful drug kingpin (Jorge Jimenez). While remixing familiar genre tropes, the thinly sketched screenplay by director Jesse Harris suffers from uneven narrative momentum and never gives moviegoers sufficient incentive for emotional investment in Elly’s fate. (Rated R, 102 minutes).

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania

The diminishing returns continue in this fourth installment of the animated franchise, which might amuse small children with its crazy characters and colorful animation but wears thin quickly for accompanying adults. This adventure finds vampire hotelier Drac (voiced by Brian Hull) and his monster friends inadvertently swapping places with human son-in-law Johnny (Andy Samberg), who becomes a dragon while Drac turns mortal thanks to a device invented by Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan), except that returning to normal isn’t so simple. The ensuing mayhem feels more familiar than fresh, despite the occasionally amusing sight gag or one-liner. It’s time to put this series in the coffin. (Rated PG, 87 minutes).

Parallel Mothers

The latest collaboration between Penelope Cruz and Spanish director Pedro Almodovar (Volver) is another multilayered melodrama about strong yet vulnerable women dealing with borderline outrageous circumstances connecting past and present. Cruz shines as Janis, a photographer whose affair with a married man leads to pregnancy. She bonds with a teenager (Milena Smit) in the maternity ward, only to find motherhood steering each of them in opposite directions, especially when their paths cross again years later. Weaving some intriguing character dynamics, this perceptive and well-acted examination of maternal instincts balances its lightweight elements with a more serious look at mental health and the burden of past secrets. (Rated R, 122 minutes).

The Pink Cloud

Completed prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this provocative pre-dystopian drama nevertheless yields an unsettling relevance. Giovana (Renata de Lelis) is trapped inside her Brazilian apartment with Yago (Eduardo Mendonca) after a one-night stand. The culprit is a toxic rose-colored gas that has suddenly brought the world to a standstill, forcing everyone into quarantine. As months and years pass, the pair navigates a turbulent life together in a way neither of them imagined. Despite a lack of broader context, the screenplay by rookie director Iuli Gerbase offers a quietly perceptive examination of family dynamics and mental health under the most stressful of circumstances. (Rated R, 104 minutes).

Shattered

Take away the smart technology, and this lurid psychosexual potboiler from director Luis Prieto (Kidnap) is a throwback to the type of erotic thrillers popularized in the 1990s, complete with the outrageous twists and sleazy periphery characters. It follows a divorced young tech mogul (Cameron Monaghan) bringing an alluring stranger (Lilly Krug) to his lavish mountain hideaway, only to discover secrets about her that reveal ulterior motives, turning their encounter into a fight for survival. Krug brings a sense of playful mischief to the femme fatale role, and the final showdown is mildly amusing. Yet the formulaic execution squanders any chance to build meaningful suspense. (Rated R, 92 minutes).